Mohave Sign Language Interpreting

Professional Mentoring

I am a graduate of the Master Mentorship Program that was housed at Troy University in 2014/2015. As a master mentor I work with professional interpreters who are interested in continuing their learning and growth through distance mentoring. A mentee-centered approach or process mediation involves providing a safe space to allow a mentee to explore their individual goals, fears, skills, and decision-making schema. 

“Seek first to understand, Then to be understood.”

-Stephen Covey, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

This quote guides my process as a mentor. The mentee leads the process and determines what would best fit their needs. I as the mentor am a supportive reflection whose role is to encourage and challenge the mentee in their growth process.

Supporting Professional Interpreters in Under-Served Areas

My passion for mentoring focuses on helping to elevate the quality of interpreting service provided to the Deaf Community in areas that currently suffer from lack of qualifications and resources. Through the use of technology like Google Hangouts and high speed Internet, meetings with mentees can occur regardless of geographic distances. My experience serving a rural area in private practice enables me to guide other practitioners interested in this area of work. Qualified interpreters may be hesitant to move to and work in areas not served by agencies or other associations. Through the mentoring process I aim to assist interested interpreters in learning how to operate their own business and provide quality services.

This process is three-fold. Interpreters may want to work on developing their business skills. They may or may not also want to focus their work on developing interpreting skills. I offer mentoring in interpreting skill assessment and development when appropriate. Often a graduate of an IPP/ITP or practicing interpreter may want to focus on improving one or more areas of their work, but is unsure how to proceed, or may simply need accountability to take action. My mentoring services extend to this area as well.

Ethical Decision-Making Through the Lens of Demand-Control Schema

When faced with a dilemma on the job, have you ever asked yourself, “What would happen if no interpreter were needed for this exchange and I was not here?”

Has another interpreter ever presented you with an ethical dilemma asking for your perspective and your initial response is, “It depends…”?

If you can answer yes to either of these questions, you may want to consider delving in to Demand-Control Schema (DC-S) and learning more about another values based approach. I also provide mentoring in the area of the DC-S and morally defensible ethical decision making. I have studied directly with Robyn Dean, the primary author of DC-S and have extensive training in her theories and work, through NTID at RIT. If a mentee is interested in learning how to make ethical decisions from an outcome centered approach rather than a rules centered approach, this program can help shift their perspective on their role as a practice professional. See this article to understand more about the value of this type of approach: Supervision and the Interpreting Profession: Support and Accountability Through Reflective Practice (Hetherington, 2012)

Contact me at admin@mohaveinterpreting.com to discuss details.

Testimonials

What previous mentees had to say about this program:  

“I found from this mentoring that I have what it takes to be an interpreter. For me this is the biggest because I was about to give up. I have new tools to work with to improve my interpreting skills.”

— JM

“This experience has been completely unlike any mentoring experience I have had before. My mentor provided me with clear feedback then supported that with additional scholarly reading and presentations, which was immensely helpful for me to apply those interpreting techniques to my own work. Often, when asking a colleague for feedback, they are only able to give vague comments about what did or didn’t work – they are unable to tell you why. Mentoring in this case gave me concrete feedback that I could work with.”

— SC

“There isn’t anything I would change about the program — I benefited greatly from the time Jasmine and I spent discussing the work.”

— SG